page_title: Simple living
section_title: Reducing consumption, work time, and possessions
hierarchical_section_title: Simple living / Practices / Reducing consumption, work time, and possessions
caption_attribution_description: A small, mobile home built at the Portland (Oregon) Alternative Dwellings Little House workshop.
context_page_description: Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include, for example, reducing one's possessions, generally referred to as minimalism, or increasing self-sufficiency. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they have rather than want. Although asceticism generally promotes living simply and refraining from luxury and indulgence, not all proponents of simple living are ascetics. Simple living is distinct from those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice.
  Adherents may choose simple living for a variety of personal reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in quality time for family and friends, work–life balance, personal taste, financial sustainability, frugality, sustainability or reducing stress. Simple living can also be a reaction to materialism and conspicuous consumption. Some cite socio-political goals aligned with the environmentalist, anti-consumerist or anti-war movements, including conservation, degrowth, deep ecology, and tax resistance.
context_section_description: Some people practice simple living by reducing consumption. By lowering expenditure on goods or services, the time spent earning money can be reduced. The time saved may be used to pursue other interests, or help others through volunteering. Some may use the extra free time to improve their quality of life, for example pursuing creative activities such as art and crafts. Developing a detachment from money has led some individuals, such as Suelo and Mark Boyle, to live with no money at all. Reducing expenses may also lead to increasing savings, which can lead to financial independence and the possibility of early retirement.
  The 100 Thing Challenge is a grassroots movement to whittle down personal possessions to one hundred items, with the aim of de-cluttering and simplifying life. The small house movement includes individuals who chose to live in small, mortgage-free, low-impact dwellings, such as log cabins or beach huts.
  Those who follow simple living may hold a different value over their homes. Joshua Becker suggests simplifying the place that they live for those who desire to live this lifestyle. He addresses the fact that the purpose of a home is a place for safety and belonging. Many get caught up over all of the space they have in their house and feel the need to buy stuff to fill it. This is something that must be reflected upon because it raises the question of if it is just pleasing to the eye, or if it is truly needed.
caption: Living simply in a small dwelling
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